Pride and punishment are part of the job

School personnel must juggle student development with needed discipline

Tuesday, May 17, 2005

BY JOHN MOONEY

STAR-LEDGER STAFF

It was a warm spring morning, and the office at Eighteenth Avenue School was quiet for a Friday.

The wooden bench along the wall was empty, not yet hosting the typical handful of boys -- almost always boys -- who earn a few minutes with principal Barbara Ervin after crossing their teachers at the Newark elementary school.

Before it came to that for one student, a teacher walked in and called a grandmother about why her grandson, usually well-behaved, was acting out. "Have you been sick or anything?" Margaret Lesperance asked into the phone.

Across the hall, social worker Nicolle Hutchins talked with a girl sprawled on a red beanbag chair.

Coming out of the principal's office, another boy didn't get off so easy. "And pick up your feet when you're walking," Ervin told him, shooing the boy back to class.

Under state and federal mandates to improve, Eighteenth Avenue School and its 51 teachers and staff are under intense pressure to boost the performance and achievement of their 300 students. But before they can, theymustcontrol and shape students' behavior and create a climate in which theyhave the best chance to learn.

Sometimes the odds seem long, and it is frequent on the four floors of the century-old building that stern voices and muted strategies are employed to keep students on track. The emotions can run high, too, when a child goes into full-scale defiance.

Through it all, Ervin is the central player. In her third year at the helm, the former second-grade teacher often speaks of the school as a respite from the hardscrabble neighborhood around her, one of Newark's poorest.

"We're a safe haven for these children," she says frequently.

She tries to focus on the positive, offering rewards and incentives. There was the roller-skating trip to Branch Brook Park last fall for students chosen for their effort and behavior, and paper trees outside classrooms for students to display their own acts of kindness.

Often it is the students themselves who provide models for good behavior.

Conspicuous in their badges and yellow belts, student "safety patrol" members help direct traffic. And class lines that snake the halls even have orderly routines.

Sometimes, the school leans on others for help. Typically on Fridays, students and volunteer mentors from Anheuser-Busch pair up in the halls, part of the school's long-running partnership with the company.

Newark native Michael Scott's charge is first-grader Rasheed Adams. The two often read together, and talk about what's happening in class or at home. "Rasheed looks forward to it every Friday," said Paula Adams, Rasheed's mother.

But Eighteenth Avenue has its share of trouble, especially with the rise in its special education population to now more than a third of the student body.

During the course of the year, two special education teachers were reassigned after allegations they physically mishandled students. One teacher was cleared; the other's case is pending, but it has fueled a tension in the school.

Lesperance deals with some of the toughest kids, all with emotional disorders. When they shut down, she has "Cool Off Corner" outside her door, including a couch, a "Time Out Tunnel" and a large plastic jar labeled the "Anger Bottle," half full of scrap-paper confessions. "I was angry because my sister was getting on my nerves," reads one.

When removing students from class doesn't work, sometimes Lesperance lets them remain and the rest of the class leaves. At worst, the teacher or a security guard must restrain a child.

One boy threw a chair toward a visitor this winter. Some will kick and yell, and Lesperance has the marks to show for it. "When you get to physical restraint, it's the last resort," Lesperance said.

More typical is the teacher's daily balancing act between encouraging those students who want to learn and working with the less inclined.

The strategies vary. Nordica Francis taught 20 years in New York City before coming to Newark four years ago, and she runs a tight classroom.

Like other teachers, she jots names of repeat offenders on the blackboard. She moves the desk of one student who can't stop jostling with her neighbor, and speaks to another boy in the hall who isn't doing any work at all.

"It can be draining," she said. "By 3 o'clock, I want to sleep."

Sixth-grade teacher Sheila Pugh, the mother of four children herself, walks amid the desks during a recent lesson on the Holocaust. She mixed facts with admonitions to focus. She grew up in Newark, and said a big part of her job is building up kids to fend off the worst of their neighborhoods.

Eighteenth Avenue's sixth-graders are a well-mannered group, and their test scores are a high point in the school's progress. Many say that's no coincidence.

"I treat them like my own kids, and tell them we can deal with problems here or deal with them in Ms. Ervin's office," Pugh said. "They know I'm not playing. They're good kids."

Most young visitors to Ervin's office seem to come from the same group of nine or 10 students, some making more than one trip a day.

And each case challenges Ervin: where to draw the line, when to call home, when to suspend, when to point back to a teacher's own classroom skills.

Ervin estimated she suspends one or two of the students a month, holding to district limits that no child be suspended more than twice in the same year or for more than 10 days total. She hears the whispers from teachers who wish she was tougher sometimes.

"I know some say I don't suspend enough, but I'm not going to do it for every little thing," she said.

Beyond Ervin, vice principal Derrick Davis is the chief disciplinarian. His long hair falling on his shoulders, Davis moves between classrooms, often a child in tow. On a recent day, there were two.

"Instead of sending them back to class and have them act out again, what's it take for me to stay with them? Fifteen minutes?" he said.

But in his first year on the job, Davis said it's been a powerful lesson in school administration.

"If as an administrator, you think you'll sit behind a desk and get something done, it's not going to happen," he said. "Not in my world."

John Mooney covers education. He may be reached at jmooney@starledger.com or (973) 392-1548.